The author is a Forbes contributor. The opinions expressed are those of the writer.

Loading ...

Loading ...

This story appears in the {{article.article.magazine.pretty_date}} issue of {{article.article.magazine.pubName}}. Subscribe

The 3D-printed lower receiver of an AR-15, which until recently could be found on the 3D-printing website Thingiverse.

You have the right to bear arms. But you don't necessarily have the right to upload them.

In the wake of one of worst shooting incidents in American history, the 3D-printing firm Makerbot has deleted a collection of blueprints for gun components from Thingiverse, its popular user-generated content website that hosts 3D-printable files. Though Thingiverse has long banned designs for weapons and their components in its terms of service, it rarely enforced the rule until the last few days, when the company's lawyer sent notices to users that their software models for gun parts were being purged from the site.

One letter forwarded to me by Thingiverse user Michael Guslick, for instance, explained that a design for an AR-15 trigger guard he uploaded to the site violated its rule that users not "collect, upload, transmit, display or distribute any User Content... that...promotes illegal activities or contributes to the creation of weapons," as the letter reads. "In exercising our policy enforcement discretion, we have decided to remove the...content as of today."

When I checked Thingiverse earlier this month for gun components, it was easy enough to find firearm parts such as the "lower receivers" for several models of semiautomatic rifles and handguns. Those designs had sparked controversy by potentially circumventing gun laws: The lower receiver is the the "body" of a gun, and its most regulated component. So 3D-printing that piece at home and attaching other parts ordered by mail might allow a lethal weapon to be obtained without any legal barriers or identification.

Guslick, a Wisconsin IT administrator whose experiments with a 3D-printed AR-15 lower receiver drew attention to the issue of 3D-printable weapons earlier this year, speculated that the removal of the files was linked with the Newtown, Connecticut gun massacre that killed 20 children and seven adults in an elementary school last week. "Correlation is not causation, but it seems pretty clear that

the tragic shooting in [Connecticut] last week is the impetus for removal of some designs on Thingiverse," he wrote to me in an email. But Guslick pointed out that several gun-related items remained on the site, including a Glock magazine and Ruger pistol grip. "I'm not sure if those are targeted for takedown as well, or if only AR-15 compatible designs are being removed (given that the popular rifle has been utterly demonized in the media over the past few days, I suppose that may be plausible)."

Makerbot, for its part, included no mention of the Newtown shootings in a statement sent to me about the gun takedowns. "MakerBot’s focus is to empower the creative process and make things for good," writes Makerbot spokesperson Jenifer Howard. "Thingiverse has been going through an evolution recently and has had numerous changes and updates. Reviewing some of the content that violates Thingiverse's Terms of Service is part of this process."

In the past, Makerbot chief executive and founder Bre Pettis has remained ambivalent about guns on Thingiverse, which has become the world's most popular sharing platform for 3D-printing files. When I asked him about the issue last month, Pettis pointed to the terms of service ban on weapons, but added that the site goes largely unpoliced. He was more explicit in a blog post last year: “The cat is out of the bag,” Pettis wrote. “And that cat can be armed with guns made with printed parts.”

That freewheeling outlook contrasted with other 3D printing services like Shapeways, which bans the uploading of even gun-like toys more than 10 centimeters in length.

In response to Makerbot's crackdown, Defense Distributed founder Cody Wilson wrote to me in an email, saying that the group plans to create its own site for hosting "fugitive" 3D printable gun files "in the next few hours."

Neither Wilson believes that neither Makerbot's purge of gun parts nor the outcry over the Newtown shooting has hampered Defense Distributed's initiative. "The Internet routes around censorship," he writes. "The project becomes more vital."